Daily Archives: December 28, 2017
Remembering the Salty Lady’s Roger Thomas
In the 1940s, a boy named Roger Thomas first walked knee-deep into the breaking waves of Monterey Bay, fishing rod in hand, and fell in love with the Pacific Ocean. Last Tuesday, 83 years after he was born, he passed away in San Francisco. Thomas, a fisherman who dedicated his life largely to protecting California’s Chinook salmon, reportedly died peacefully, several months after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Thomas’s best friend Jacky Douglas, also a fishing boat skipper, sat by his side as he took his final breaths. click here to read the story 23:07
More fluke, less sea bass, but no difference for frustrated CT commercial fisherman under 2018 quotas
East Coast fishermen will be allowed to catch more summer flounder and not as much sea bass as last year, under new quotas proposed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. But Stonington fisherman say the effects of the changing quotas will be nominal, and they will continue to advocate for an overhaul of the quota system, which they say has been unfair for decades. click here to read the story 21:54 
All Hands on Deck! Sam Parisi gives an update on efforts to get a Fish Bill, wants to know what YOU want included!
First let me thank Fisherynation.com for publishing my letter. I have received many emails and calls from fishermen and fisheries association’s, and it has been great to have them join in with me. I have also had many ask what is this Fish Bill all about ,and they deserve and answer. To be clear, I do not know how to write a bill, and at some point a Senator or Congressman will have to write the bill, with all the specifics spelled out. Now is the time to discuss and add input about what you’d like to see in your US Fish Bill. In the meantime, here is a brief summary of what some of us would like the bill to do. click here to read the story 18:42
The Illegal Black Market – Abalone haul costs man $500,000
A Chula Vista man who owns a seafood company was fined $15,000 Dec. 18 and ordered to forfeit $500,000 in proceeds stemming from his illegally importing abalone from Mexico without specifying from where it came. Yon Pon Wong, 65, the owner of the Lucky Company, pleaded guilty to false labeling in the U.S. in which he sold 148,500 pounds of abalone and falsely stated where he obtained it. click here to read the story 17:46
British Columbia court grants injunction to fish farm, ending protests
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has granted an injunction to Marine Harvest Canada’s Midsummer Island farm, which is located amid a series of islands in the Broughton Archipelago, about 50 kilometres east of Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. Protesters began occupying the farm in September, although Molina Dawson, a protester with the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw Nation, said they scaled back their activity while the legal proceedings were underway. Justice Peter Voith said in the decision that the protesters’ presence “gives rise to real safety issues” and he agrees that Marine Harvest will suffer irreparable harm if the occupation of the farm continues. click here to read the story 15:24
Ex-National Fish president pleads guilty to tax fraud
The former president of East Gloucester-based National Fish pleaded guilty to seven counts of tax evasion on Friday as part of a deal with federal prosecutors that removed more serious conspiracy charges involving at least one other National Fish executive. Jack A. Ventola of Ipswich changed his plea to guilty last Tuesday and now faces up to three years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of at least $250,000 for each of the seven counts. Ventola also was ordered to make restitution of $1.07 million to the IRS. click here to read the story 13:53
Photos: The ‘Craziest Lobster’ contest draws unusual photos of fishermens’ bizarre catches
An unusual contest has uncovered dozens of bizarre lobsters found in the waters of Canada’s East Coast — including blue ones, three-clawed ones, and even one as big as a beagle. Fishermen have submitted photos of about 75 lobsters to a “Craziest Lobster” contest on the Facebook page of Murray GM, a car dealership in southwestern Nova Scotia. click here to see the photos, read the story 13:10 
The trade ban stays despite the growing seal populations – Only sealskin from Greenland can be traded in Finland.
The warm sealskin products are easy to sell in the cold conditions of the Arctic. The material would also be available in Finland, but, because of an EU ban against seal trade, only sealskin from Greenland can be traded. As winter embraces the north and cold spells hit the region, vendor Pekka Halonen starts his mobile shop and sets off to travel around Sápmi, the Land of the Sámi, in Finland and Norway. In 2009, the European Parliament decided that seal products could not be sold in or imported for sale into the European Union. click here to read the story 11:25
Current fishery situation is not sustainable – Kent Martin
I feel compelled to comment on the article in the Eagle (12/21/17) from the Columbia Basin Bulletin, “Group Tests Fish Trap above Cathlamet.” I attended the Wild Fish Conservancy presentation to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission and noted several inaccuracies, and the CBB added a few more. 1. Fish traps were never the “massive” harvest technology on the Columbia. They were outlawed in 1936 in Washington and 1948 in Oregon because many, if not most, were vertically integrated with the fish packers, and were being used to manipulate fish prices. I confronted one of the Wild Fish Conservancy people on this, and he admitted this was the case.,,, click here to read the story 10:43
Deep-water experiment reveals lobsters’ appetite for jellyfish
A team from Heriot-Watt University was surprised to find lobster scaring off other marine life in order to eat defrosted helmet jellyfish carcasses which has been attached to an underwater camera and lowered 250 metres in the Sognefjorden in western Norway. The experiment was designed to find out which deep-water species were most attracted by a jellyfish dinner, with hagfish and amphipods expected to be interested. But it was the Norway lobster – worth around £80 million to Scottish fishing catches – that was most keen and ate half of the jellyfish. click here to read the story 10:15
In 2018, Thorny Issues Ahead – Fishermen versus wind farm, beach access at Napeague remain unresolved
The proposed South Fork Wind Farm occupied the attention of many residents and governing officials throughout 2017 and, if anything, will be a matter of greater debate next year as its developer, Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind, submits formal applications to multiple federal, state, and local permitting agencies.,, Most recently, commercial fishermen and Deepwater Wind are at odds over reports by the former that their trawl nets have snagged on the concrete mats that cover approximately 5 percent of the Block Island Wind Farm’s transmission cable. click here to read the story 09:41
9th Circuit Gives Enviros New Way to Shut Down Hawaii Fishing Fleet
Federal agencies must rethink permitting a swordfish-catching operation to increase the use of a fishing method that can kill endangered sea turtles and seabirds, according to a decision by a federal appeals court on Tuesday. Two of the three judges on a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel agreed with the Turtle Island Restoration Network and other environmental organizations that argued the National Marine Fisheries Service acted improperly when it increased the amount of sea turtles that could be killed incidentally in the waters off of Hawaii as part of a fishing method called longlining. Specifically, the majority said the fisheries service failed to properly integrate a climate-based model that showed significant declines in the population of the loggerheads sea turtle. click here to read the story 09:06 
